South Middleton Township to Carlisle Borough
Pennsylvania Act 32 local earned income tax · CUMBERLAND to CUMBERLAND County · tax year 2026
Home rate
1.6%
South Middleton Township, residents
Work rate
1%
Carlisle Borough, non-residents
You pay
1.6%
the higher of the two
Cost of the commute
$0
a year, above the home rate
What this commute costs you
no extra local taxSouth Middleton Township already charges its residents more than Carlisle Borough charges commuters, so the home rate governs and the job adds nothing at all. You pay the solid bar only — Pennsylvania charges the higher of the two rates, never their sum. Local earned income tax only; state, federal and payroll tax apply on top.
What this commute actually costs
- Good news for this commute. Working in Carlisle Borough costs you nothing extra. South Middleton Township charges residents about 1.6%, at least as much as Carlisle Borough asks of people who work there but live elsewhere. The higher rate wins, so your home rate is simply the rate. That is $960 a year, wherever you work.
- From South Middleton Township, this is destination number 1 of 1 tracked. From Carlisle Borough, there is little to compare with. Few other routes into it are recorded.
- For the South Middleton Township to Carlisle Borough commute the residence governs. South Middleton Township's resident rate of about 1.6% equals or exceeds Carlisle Borough's non-resident rate, so Pennsylvania's greater-of test resolves to the resident rate and the effective burden is about 1.6%, or $960 at the reference salary. The workplace adds nothing; the entire amount is remitted to the residence. This is the majority outcome and the one most commuters need confirmed.
- From the origin, Carlisle Borough is South Middleton Township's 1 destination of 1 recorded. From the destination, recorded inflows are too few to rank origins against one another, which is common for smaller workplaces in this dataset.
Where the money goes
A $75,000 salary
- Federal income tax$7,670
- Social Security and Medicare$5,738
- State income tax$2,303
- Yours$59,290
| Federal income tax10.23% | $7,670 |
|---|---|
| Social Security and Medicare7.65% | $5,738 |
| State income tax3.07% | $2,303 |
| Yours79.05% | $59,290 |
The arithmetic, side by side
| If you worked in South Middleton Township | $960 |
|---|---|
| Working in Carlisle Borough | $960 |
| Difference | $0 |
On a reference salary of $60,000 a year. The local tax is flat, so every figure scales with your own pay.
What this page does not cover
- To be explicit, since the arrangement invites confusion. The rates for South Middleton Township and Carlisle Borough are not stacked. Pennsylvania takes the larger one. What is collected then gets divided between the two municipalities. That division does not change what comes out of your pay.
- Everything here is the local earned income tax and nothing else. State income tax applies on top, as do federal tax and Social Security. None of those change when you cross a municipal line between South Middleton Township and Carlisle Borough. This page is about the layer that does.
- The dollar figures use a flat reference salary of sixty thousand a year. That is a benchmark, not an average for South Middleton Township. No wage data exists for single municipalities, and inventing one would be worse. Scale the numbers to your own pay. The rate for the Carlisle Borough commute is what matters, and it does not change with income.
- A postal address in South Middleton Township does not prove which municipality taxes you. Boundaries and postcodes disagree often enough here that the state publishes a lookup. Philadelphia is a special case too. Its wage tax sits outside the rules that govern Carlisle Borough.
- The two rates applicable to a South Middleton Township–Carlisle Borough commute are alternatives, not addends. The statute fixes the employee's liability at the greater of them and then apportions the proceeds, with the residence receiving up to its own rate and the excess passing to the work location. The apportionment is fiscally significant to the municipalities and immaterial to the worker.
- Figures cover the local earned income tax exclusively. Pennsylvania's flat state income tax, federal income tax and FICA apply in addition and are invariant to the South Middleton Township–Carlisle Borough municipal boundary, which is precisely why they are excluded: isolating the layer that responds to the commute is the point of the comparison.
- Dollar amounts are computed against a stated reference salary rather than a municipal wage average, which does not exist for Pennsylvania municipalities in any published source. Because the local tax is flat, the rate is invariant to income and the figures scale linearly — the South Middleton Township to Carlisle Borough differential doubles at twice the salary and halves at half of it.
- Municipal taxing jurisdiction is determined by boundary rather than by postal address, and the two diverge frequently enough in Pennsylvania that the DCED lookup should be treated as authoritative for South Middleton Township. Philadelphia is additionally outside this regime, administering its own wage tax on residents and non-residents under separate authority, so it does not follow the treatment described for Carlisle Borough.
Questions people ask
Do I pay local tax twice — once where I work and once where I live?
No — you pay the higher of the two rates and never the sum. South Middleton Township levies about 1.6% on residents and Carlisle Borough levies about 1% on people who work there; whichever is larger is what you owe, and your employer withholds it.
Does working in a different town cost me anything?
Not a cent on this one. The crossing changes where the money is sent, not how much of it leaves, so your total matches a stay-at-home commute.
Which town's rate am I actually paying?
The one where you live. South Middleton Township levies at least as much as Carlisle Borough, so its rate applies and the crossing costs you nothing extra.
Is this commute common enough for the numbers to mean anything?
826 workers make this journey — enough to be published, but not a major corridor. The tax rules do not depend on how many people travel a route, so the figures hold regardless; the count only tells you how typical this pairing is.
How does Pennsylvania's local earned income tax law allocate liability between two districts?
Pennsylvania's local earned income tax law assigns the higher of the residence rate (about 1.6%) and the non-resident work rate (about 1%); liabilities are never summed. The employer withholds at the governing rate and remits through the work district's collector, which then distributes to the residence district.
Why is the marginal cost of this crossing zero?
Marginal liability from working outside the residence jurisdiction is zero on this route. The crossing alters the distribution of revenue between jurisdictions but not the employee's total. ⚠️ This is route-specific and does not generalise to other pairs in the same dataset.
Which district's rate governs on this route?
The residence rate equals or exceeds the work district's non-resident rate and therefore governs. Working outside the residence district does not increase employee liability on this route; it affects only inter-district distribution.
What is the measurement basis for a route of this size?
Route volume is 826 workers per Census LODES, above the publication floor but below the dataset's upper quartile. Liability is determined by jurisdictional rates and residence rules alone; commuter volume has no bearing on it and is reported only as context.